Australia Post apologises after child makes 'devastating' find inside parcel
The incident was raised in parliament, and Australia Post has spoken with the family of the boy who received the package.
For most kids, nothing could be more joyful than receiving a package in the mail. But when a 16-year-old opened his package from Australia Post, what he discovered inside left him close to tears.
The incident, which saw an Express Post satchel containing dead bees delivered to the teenager, has prompted an apology from the postal service and a speech in Parliament calling for an overhaul of packaging rules. The Animal Justice Party’s Emma Hurst described the incident as “shocking”.
It wasn’t that teenage beekeeper Quinn didn’t expect to find bees inside the Express Post satchel, the problem was he thought they’d be alive. Unsurprisingly, after his prized queen bee and several nurse bees became lost in the post for 10 days, and temperatures soared above 30 degrees, she perished.
“It was devastating… I really care about my bees, and the last thing I want to do is harm or kill them,” Quinn told Yahoo News.
While the transport of most live animals is banned by Australia Post, Hurst is concerned that it allows bees to simply be dropped in the post box along with letters, cards and bills. And Quinn's experience isn't an isolated one — mortalities are a frequent occurrence.
“Packages containing these live animals are treated the same as regular mail… and are subject to rough and unpredictable handling in packages that could easily be crushed, lacks air, light, food and water” Hurst told NSW Parliament last week.
Is Australia Post aware bees die in transport?
Those placing bees in the mail are warned by Australia Post that the animals inside need to be able to withstand being dropped up to 1.2 metres, and there are no temperature controls where the packages are stored.
To minimise mortalities, Australia Post recommends bees be sent on a Monday, to give them the best chance of not being left boxed up over the weekend. And senders must adhere to what the service describes as “strict requirements for packaging”.
“We have very strict rules and guidelines that were recently updated in consultation with experts including beekeeping associations and university researchers, with animal welfare front of mind,” an Australia Post spokesperson told Yahoo News.
How many bees are actually sent in the mail?
If you assumed bee transportation in Australia was a niche issue, you’d be wrong. The Australian Honey Bee Industry Council estimates hundreds of thousands of queens are transported around the country each year. Because beekeepers across the southern end of Australia don’t have optimal weather conditions to breed queen bees, they often source them from Queensland and northern NSW.
“We are in regular dialogue with Australia Post, especially when we do have issues. We have been working with them to update those protocols and make sure they are fit for purpose,” the Council’s CEO Danny Le Feuvre told Yahoo News.
“We've got a queen breeding association and they’ve been doing things like putting temperature tags in consignments to monitor the temperature in transit to see what we can do to improve. But it is a very large system that they're operating, and there are mistakes from time to time.”
Can't bees just be sent through courier services?
With many beekeepers struggling to simply cover costs of production, Le Feuvre argues sending bees through courier services to rural areas would be prohibitively expensive.
But it’s not just bees that are transported under Australia Post’s invertebrate exemptions. Millions of insects including mealworms, and flies, which are used for pollination, are also sent via the post.
“Where farmers are trying to use less pesticides, they turn to things like beneficial insects to provide an alternative method. And the only way that they can be moved to stay alive and be viable on farm is to be posted,” Le Feuvre said.
How did Australia Post respond to the child?
While insects benefit Australia’s agriculture sector, Hurst believes the central issue for Australia Post should be the well-being of the animals in its care.
“Why on earth Australia Post thinks it’s acceptable to allow live animals such as bees to be sent through the post is beyond me,” she told Yahoo. “Animal welfare is being ignored and it is absolutely unacceptable.”
Quinn’s mother Rebecca, who is based in Byron Bay, contacted Hurst after feeling Australia Post showed little compassion for the bees or their welfare, describing the response when the bees were lost two weeks ago as “aggressive” and “defensive” until the politician advocated for her.
“My son is pretty sensitive, and he was really excited about the queen bee coming. He was distressed and felt like her dying was his fault” he said.
“Australia Post just really didn’t care. The package even had on the outside of it, live queen bees, so that they knew what was inside.
“When they finally arrived they were crispy and in this tiny container, the queen bee and her nurses. I was just like, Oh my god, this is heartbreaking. They just slowly died in the mail.”
Australia Post confirmed with Yahoo it had since responded to Quinn. “We take the utmost care with deliveries of this nature and have sincerely apologised to the customer,” a spokesperson said.
Will Australia Post be banning the transport of bees?
Hurst said her call for Australia Post to review its live animal protocols so that “no more animals suffer and die” was rejected. She’s launched an online petition calling for a ban — you can read the full wording here.
"Guidelines are just guidelines - they can and will continue to be ignored meaning animals will continue to suffer. If Australia Post genuinely cares about the welfare of these animals they will change the rules to stop all animals being sent by the post,” she said.
Yahoo reached out to the company that supplied the bees, but the business did not respond at the time of publication.
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